Becky Tanzola, April Wiltsey, Jenny Mabes, Rita Santiago and Martin Memminger stand in Bliss Color Bar and Salon on East State Street Extension. (Staff photo by Laura Pollack.)
By Jacquelyn Pillsbury
Martin Memminger’s path to becoming a hair salon owner in Hamilton is unusual.
To start with, Memminger does not know how to cut hair—well, except for his own close-cropped haircut. Also after spending 20 years in the Air Force and traveling around the globe, he was prepared to live anywhere but New Jersey.
Life, though, had other ideas for him.
In 2010, he returned to New Jersey to take care of his parents, first John, his father, who died four months later, then Eva, his mother, who passed away last year. While taking care of his mother, he realized the order the military provided in his life was gone.
“I had to find that structure,” Memminger said. “I saw an ad in the paper for a business. It was purely a business opportunity, but when I walked into the place I felt good about it.”
That was three years ago. The business was Trebet’s Hair Salon in Hamilton. He bought it, and renamed the business Bliss Color Bar and Salon. The full-service salon is near I-295 and the Hamilton Train Station on East State Street Extension.
Trebet’s was named for the former owners, Theresa Olfszak and Betteann Paglione. They stayed to work at the salon for two years after Memminger bought it. Memminger credited them for creating a “comfortable, homey, and welcoming space.”
The name change is a nod to his mother. Her picture with her dog hangs in the salon as a gentle reminder. Eva Memminger taught him the importance of happiness.
“My mother said she was worried about me, that I would die young,” Memminger said. “‘You are on this earth to make people happy,’ she told me.”
His parents immigrated to the United States from Germany in the 1950s. They sailed here at the same time on two different ships. They were a month apart in age.
“They had nothing,” Memminger said. “They ended up meeting here.”
They settled in Hamilton where they raised three sons. John was in the Air Force before working for a Fortune 500 computer company training people. Eva was artistic, and in touch with nature.
After attending Steinert High School, Martin Memminger went to Mercer County College for a semester then transferred to Fordham University. The business courses he took in the Bronx on the way to his finance degree helped him understand what is a worthwhile investment.
His mother. meanwhile, taught him about bliss.
“She was one of the happiest people I knew,” he said. “That is what I learned over the past four years or so—we all have what we need to be happy, we just don’t know it.”
He strives to give his customers an environment where they can enjoy themselves.
Memminger credits his business’s success to hiring good people and providing “a very easy going culture. I don’t want to run a business where I don’t want to be here every day.” He considers himself the “Chief Happiness Officer.” He prides his staff, which includes stylists Rita Santiago and Becky Tanzola, assistant April Wiltsey, and Jennifer Mabes at the front desk with providing “a good place to be. We want to pamper people without being obsequious about it.”
Memminger said the stylists “get the place rocking. Entertaining—that is the key. It is flat out entertaining to be here. The chatter … the way the stylists get along.”
Memminger is hoping to hire more stylists who “want to work in a place where they are thrilled to be showing up every day while still being professional and competent.”
Bliss Color Bar and Salon is located at 2907 East State Street Extension, Hamilton. Phone: (609) 587-2888. Web: trebetshairsalon.com. A new website is coming soon.
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